World health boss warns of escalating rate of coronavirus infection across the world

People over age 60 wait in an hours-long line to get the AstraZeneca vaccine, on the day Mexico began vaccinating its elderly population against Covid-19, outside a health centre in the outlying Milpa Alta borough of Mexico City (Rebecca Blackwell/AP)

The head of the World Health Organisation said coronavirus cases are continuing to rise globally at “worrying” rates and noted that the number of new cases confirmed per week has nearly doubled during the past two months.

At a press briefing on Friday in Geneva, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the number of new cases “is approaching the highest rate of infection that we have seen so far in the pandemic”.